Top abstract-class books mentioned on stackoverflow.com

The average book on Agile software development describes a fairyland of greenfield projects, with wall-to-wall tests that run after every few edits, and clean & simple source code.

The average software project, in our industry, was written under some aspect of code-and-fix, and without automated unit tests. And we can't just throw this code away; it represents a significant effort debugging and maintaining. It contains many latent requirements decisions. Just as Agile processes are incremental, Agile adoption must be incremental too. No more throwing away code just because it looked at us funny.

Mike begins his book with a very diplomatic definition of "Legacy". I'l skip ahead to the undiplomatic version: Legacy code is code without unit tests.

Before cleaning that code up, and before adding new features and removing bugs, such code must be de-legacified. It needs unit tests.

To add unit tests, you must change the code. To change the code, you need unit tests to show how safe your change was.

The core of the book is a cookbook of recipes to conduct various careful attacks. Each presents a particular problem, and a relatively safe way to migrate the code towards tests.

Code undergoing this migration will begin to experience the benefits of unit tests, and these benefits will incrementally make new tests easier to write. These efforts will make aspects of a legacy codebase easy to change.

It's an unfortunate commentary on the state of our programming industry how much we need this book.

A new edition of this title is available, ISBN-10: 0321545613 ISBN-13: 9780321545619 "This book is an absolute must-read for all .NET developers. It gives clear do and don't guidance on how to design class libraries for .NET. It also offers insight into the design and creation of .NET that really helps developers understand the reasons why things are the way they are. This information will aid developers designing their own class libraries and will also allow them to take advantage of the .NET class library more effectively." --Jeffrey Richter, author/trainer/consultant, Wintellect "Framework Design Guidelineswill help you in two important ways. First, any .NET developer will benefit from a greater understanding of the design principles that govern the .NET Base Class Library. Second, a deeper understanding of these principles will help you to create software that integrates well with the .NET environment. Quite frankly, this book should be on every .NET developer's bookshelf." --Bill Wagner, founder and consultant, SRT Solutions, author ofEffective C# "Not since Brooks'The Mythical Man Monthhas the major software maker of its time produced a book so full of relevant advice for the modern software developer. This book has a permanent place on my bookshelf and I consult it frequently." --George Byrkit, senior software engineer, Genomic Solutions "This book is a must-read for all architects and software developers thinking about frameworks. The book offers insight into some driving factors behind the design of the .NET Framework. It should be considered mandatory reading for anybody tasked with creating application frameworks." --Peter Winkler, senior software engineer, Balance Technology Inc. "Frameworks are valuable but notoriously difficult to construct: Your every decision must be geared towards making them easy to be used correctly and difficult to be used incorrectly. This book takes you through a progression of recommendations that will eliminate many of those downstream 'I wish I'd known that earlier' moments. I wish I'd read it earlier." --Paul Besly, principal technologist, QA "Filled with information useful to developers and architects of all levels, this book provides practical guidelines and expert background information to get behind the rules.Framework Design Guidelinestakes the already published guidelines to a higher level, and it is needed to write applications that integrate well in the .NET area." --Cristof Falk, software engineer Framework Design Guidelines: Conventions, Idioms, and Patterns for Reusable .NET Librariesteaches developers the best practices for designing system frameworks and reusable libraries for use with the Microsoft .NET Framework and WinFX. This book focuses on the design issues that directly affect the programmability of a framework, specifically its publicly accessible APIs. This book can improve the work of any .NET developer producing code that other developers will use. An added benefit is a collection of annotations to the guidelines by various members of the Microsoft .NET Framework and WinFX teams, which provide a lively discussion of the motives behind the guidelines, along with examples of good reasons for breaking the guidelines. Microsoft architects Krzysztof Cwalina and Brad Abrams offer guidelines for framework design from the top down. From their long experience and deep insight, you will learn The general philosophy of framework design Principles and guidelines that are fundamental to overall framework design Naming guidelines for the various parts of a framework, such as namespaces, types, and members Guidelines for the design of types and members of types Issues and guidelines that are important to ensure appropriate extensibilityin your framework Guidelines for working with exceptions, the preferred error reporting mechanism in the .NET Framework and WinFX Guidelines for extending and using types that commonly appear in frameworks Guidelines for and examples of common framework design patterns Guidelines in this book come in four major forms:Do,Consider,Avoid, andDo not. In general, aDoguideline should almost always be followed, aConsiderguideline should generally be followed, anAvoidguideline indicates that something is generally not a good idea, and aDo notguideline indicates something you should almost never do. Every guideline includes a discussion of its applicability, and most guidelines include a code example. A companion DVD includes theDesigning .NET Class Librariesvideo series, instructional presentations by the authors on design guidelines for developing classes and components that extend the .NET Framework. A sample API specification and other useful resources are also included.

The definitive reference to the C# Programming Language, updated for the new version 4.0, direct from its creator, Anders Hejlsberg * *New to this edition - all code presented in full color. *Contains insightful, valuable annotations from twelve leading C# programmers, available nowhere else. *C# has become the most widely used language for Windows development. *Anders Hejlsberg is the creator of C#, and a true legend among programmers. C# is now firmly established as the most-used language when writing applications for Windows and the Microsoft platform. Written by the language's architect, Anders Hejlsberg, and design team members, and now updated for C# 4.0, The C# Programming Language, 4/e, is the definitive technical reference for C#. It provides the most complete specification of the languages, along with descriptions, reference materials, and code samples from the C# design team. This edition also adds valuable notes, comments, and tips from twelve of the world's top C# programmers, including Bill Wagner, Chris Sells, Jesse Liberty, and Brad Abrams. It has been brought fully up to date with the new features of C# 4.0. And new to this edition, all the code will be presented in full color, so that it appears in the book exactly as it appears on screen. This book is a must-have for any developer using C# on a regular basis.

You might think more than enough design books exist in the programming world already. In fact, there are so many that it makes sense to ask why you would read yet another. Is there really a need for yet another design book? In fact, there is a greater need than ever before, and Practical API Design: Confessions of a Java Framework Architect fills that need! Teaches you how to write an API that will stand the test of time Written by the designer of the NetBeans API at Sun Technologies Based on best practices, scalability, and API design patterns

EXAM PREP GUIDE Ace your preparation for the skills measured by MCTS Exam 70-516 - and on the job - with this official Microsoft study guide. Work at your own pace through a series of lessons and reviews that fully cover each exam objective. Then, reinforce and apply what you've learned through real-world case scenarios and practice exercises. Maximize your performance on the exam by mastering the skills and experience measured by these objectives: Modeling data Managing connections and context Querying data Manipulating data Developing and deploying reliable applications PRACTICE TESTS Assess your skills with practice tests. You can work through hundreds of questions using multiple testing modes to meet your specific learning needs. You get detailed explanations for right and wrong answers--including a customized learning path that describes how and where to focus your studies. For customers who purchase an ebook version of this title, instructions for downloading the CD files can be found in the ebook.

Mark Grand's 'Patterns in Java' is the first volume in a series that offers blueprints for software development projects and their creators. It collates patterns already in circulation, introduces new ones and shows how to create patterns from scratch.